All the news

• EMPHASIS on LAMP technology
  

  The EMPHASIS project (Effective Management of Pests and Harmful Alien Species – Integrated Solutions), which is seeking practical solutions “to predict, to prevent and to protect agriculture and forestry systems from native and alien pests threats”, will be focusing on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) as an emerging molecular tool for the rapid in-field diagnosis of plant diseases at a summer school this July.

• JHI heads Centre of Expertise in Plant Health
  

  ENDURE’s Scottish partner, the James Hutton Institute (JHI), is heading up the country’s new Centre of Expertise in Plant Health, which is taking a coordinated cross-sector approach to pest monitoring and will also seek to help stakeholders improve their own plant health capabilities.

• The case for IPM breeding programmes
  

  European experts have called for a shake-up in the way crops are bred for Integrated Pest Management (IPM), pointing out that current private breeding programmes are mainly targeted at conventional agriculture and therefore do not produce the species and varieties more sustainable systems require.

• Progress on more sustainable oilseed rape
  

  Two ENDURE partners have published details of their ongoing work on more sustainable methods for growing oilseed rape (OSR). INRA (France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research) has revealed details of its promising trials of accompanying winter rapeseed crops with legumes as a means of reducing weed pressure, while Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) hosted an international workshop on ‘Clubroot disease in oilseed rape - status quo and research demand’ with an emphasis on integrated approaches.

• Call for stakeholders to boost IPM
  

  A pan-European group of IPM experts has drawn on the work conducted within the three-year European Research Area Network on Coordinated Integrated Pest Management (ERA-Net C-IPM) to produce a paper outlining the steps stakeholders can take to boost IPM uptake in Europe.

• 'Inspiring' Agroecological Crop Protection course
  

  Some 26 participants from 10 countries, including PhD students as well as postdocs, junior and senior researchers working in Africa, Asia, South America, Central America and Europe, attended ENDURE’s international training course on Agroecological Crop Protection (ACP) which ran from February 12 to 16, 2018.

• New times ahead for European weed management
  

  Integrated weed management is the way to go for sustainable and resilient agriculture. A new Horizon 2020 project will support and promote its implementation in Europe, reports Janne Hansen, from the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, Denmark.

• June date for Plant Biology Europe
  

  The biennial Plant Biology Europe conference is being held at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen from June 18 to 21, offering the chance to learn from 10 high-profile plenary speakers in addition to 17 keynote talks and more than 500 posters.

• Agroscope trials fungi to control Japanese visitor
  

  Researchers from Agroscope, ENDURE’s Swiss partner, will this year be investigating whether it is feasible to control Japanese beetles in the field with a fungi that has already proved effective against May and June beetles.

• Crop loss conference: final report online
  

  The final report from last October’s three-day International Conference on Global Crop Losses Caused by Diseases, Pests and Weeds is now available. The event was organised by INRA, through its SMaCH (Sustainable Management of Crop Health) and GloFoodS (Transitions to Global Food Security) metaprogrammes, and in partnership with CIRAD and ISPP (International Society of Plant Pathology).